While Hillary Clinton’s
presidential campaign boasts ambitious green goals, like installing half a
billion solar panels and generating enough renewable energy to power
every American home, a pro-Clinton super PAC (political action committee) champions her record in promoting fossil fuel production.
Ironically, that super PAC is named Correct the Record.
Enabled by a recent advisory
opinion by the Federal Election Commission, Correct the Record has reportedly collaborated directly with the Clinton campaign.
Led by Clinton ally David Brock, Correct the Record spun off from American Bridge PAC in May and received
attention in September when it went negative on candidate Bernie Sanders, despite
Clinton’s commitment not to do so.
Correct the Record set up the webpage Hillary Clinton: Fueling America’s Energy
Future as one of 26 different “Record Analyses.” All 11 major points made on the webpage
tout Clinton’s last two years as Secretary of State.
About half of the page’s
talking points are devoted to giving Clinton credit for the Obama
administration’s use of natural gas as a
geopolitical tool, even citing Russia, Ukraine and Putin in section headings.
For example:
“Sec. Clinton significantly
elevated the role of energy as a driver of foreign policy.”
“Sec. Clinton’s Bureau of
Energy Resources helped European nations reduce dependence on Russian gas.”
“Sec. Clinton’s Bureau of
Energy Resources lessened Putin’s leverage over Ukraine and Europe’s energy
supply.”
“Sec. Clinton created the
Bureau of Energy Resources for the purpose of channeling the domestic energy
boom into a geopolitical tool to advance American interests around the world.”
Correct the Record has
promoted the webpage’s pro-fossil fuel messaging on Twitter:
A different webpage on Correct the Record’s website, Hillary
Clinton: Stemming the Tide of Climate Change, appears to have been designed to
defend against attacks from the left. That web page relies more on excerpts
from Clinton’s book, Hard Choices, and does not mention natural gas, Russia,
Ukraine or Putin.
Yet another Correct the Record
webpage
purports to defend Clinton’s environmental record generally, but has
significantly less content than the Fueling America’s Energy Future or Stemming
the Tide of Climate Change pages. There, Correct the Record highlights
Clinton’s December 2014 New York City speech before the League of Conservation
Voters in which she qualified
her enthusiasm for fracking and natural gas, by saying “If we are smart
about this and put in place the right safeguards, natural gas can play an
important bridge role in the transition to a cleaner energy economy.”
Meanwhile in July, the Clinton
campaign pledged to introduce a “comprehensive energy and climate agenda.”
Sections of that agenda already released include revitalizing coal communities and modernizing North American energy infrastructure. Both
those sections affirm Clinton’s commitment to “energy and climate security”
that prioritizes the reduction in the amount of oil consumed in the U.S. and
around the world, without mentioning natural gas. The campaign’s four-page “Climate Change Fact Sheet” commits to reducing oil
consumption, also without mentioning natural gas.
The full scope of Clinton’s
promotion of fracking and natural gas as geopolitical tools during her tenure
as Secretary of State continues to be exposed. Among the State Department’s New
Year’s Eve release of Clinton emails, an April 2012 email from then Sec. of Energy Steven Chu to
Clinton followed up on their prior conversation “about how—U.S. companies and
the USG—can help other countries develop the shale oil and gas with hydraulic
fracking in an environmentally responsible way.” Per Chu, “The responsible
development of these resources can change the energy and geo-political
landscape in profound ways.”
Chu provided Clinton contact
information for two DOE employees who would support the State Department with
this agenda, joking that he would have gotten back to her sooner had he not
been distracted by the Tumblr page Texts from
Hillary. Clinton forwarded Chu’s email to an assistant requesting the email
address for Carlos Pascual, who she had appointed to Special Envoy and
Coordinator for International Affairs. However, no emails from Clinton to
Pascual following that request appear to have been released by the State
Department as of yet, although a final production of Clinton emails is expected in
January.
Correct the Record,
incidentally, points to a New York Times article that describes Pascual’s role as
leading the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources, “created in late
2011 by Hillary Rodham Clinton … for the purpose of channeling the domestic
energy boom into a geopolitical tool to advance American interests around the
world.”
The fact that Clinton
discussed using gas and fracking as a geopolitical tool directly with Chu and
made plans to coordinate that agenda with the DOE may compromise her ability to
connect with voters who see any increase in the production of fossil fuels as
reckless.
When recently asked by 350
Iowa’s Steve Patterson whether she would sign a pledge not to take money from
the fossil fuel industry, Clinton responded
that she opposed offshore drilling and vowed to look into fossil fuel industry
donations. “I will do everything I can to know that everyone who gives me money
knows exactly what I’m going to do when I am elected, there’s no doubt about
that,” she said.
Clinton has yet to explain
exactly how increasing natural gas production could possibly be compatible with
effective climate change
mitigation, much less climate recovery. And Correct the Record isn’t helping.
Curtis Morrison is a freelance
journalist and Whittier Law School J.D. candidate with environmental law
concentration.
No comments:
Post a Comment